However, this claim is potentially seriously misleading, if not outright wrong. ABC’s cookies substitute animal oils (like butter), dairy, and eggs with palm oil. To be sure, ABC now (since August 2013) uses palm oil certified by the RSPO, which is less destructive than the non-certified palm oil that is responsible for wiping out acres of Indonesia’s rainforest.

But this does not let RSPO off the hook. Third-party certification like RSPO is primarily a market tool: certifiers and producers have an incentive to get as many people certified as possible, even if it means watering down the stringency of this certification scheme. And, according to Greenpeace and the Guardian, that is exactly what is happening. RSPO plantations in Indonesia and Brazil (where ABC sources their oil) are still engaged in rampant deforestation and have contributed to “significant deforestation” in certified areas. As you can imagine, deforestation in countries like Indonesia and Brazil have tremendous environmental impacts, ranging from a loss in biodiversity, to displacement of rural inhabitants, to land degradation and deforestation, and – of course – increased GHG emissions.

So what’s the upshot? First, this idea that a vegan/vegetarian diet is somehow, intrinsically, better for the environment is simply not true. A diet based on the exploitation of pristine rainforest is far worse than a diet based on the consumption of locally-sourced, sustainable animal products. Second, third party certification should be scrutinized very carefully. Third party certification is foremost a business model, and like all business models, the primary incentive is to make profits in a defined market. This is not to say that it can’t lead to better environmental practices, but this is not a necessary outcome, and should not be assumed.

For ABC (and other companies that use RSPO certified palm oil), their choices are clear: either 1) do better research and use vegan oils that are less environmentally problematic than RSPO palm oil; 2) stop assuming that “vegan” = “environmentally good,” and use more sustainable oils, even if they come from animal products; 3) continue using RSPO oil, but remove all claims that this has a “profoundly positive impacts on… the environment.”

]]>http://sites.middlebury.edu/fuentesgeorge/2014/09/19/trouble-back-home-international-regimes/feed/0Soylent is Not Made From People – But It Still Looks Terriblehttp://sites.middlebury.edu/fuentesgeorge/2014/08/27/soylent-is-not-made-from-people-but-it-still-looks-terrible/
http://sites.middlebury.edu/fuentesgeorge/2014/08/27/soylent-is-not-made-from-people-but-it-still-looks-terrible/#commentsWed, 27 Aug 2014 20:07:03 +0000http://sites.middlebury.edu/fuentesgeorge/?p=423Continue reading →]]>

Eat Up!

One of the putative benefits of Soylent, the brand new food substitute getting coverage in the NYTimes, Slate, and so on, is its environmental impact. Soylent is a nutritional drink, designed in 2013 by wunderkind and tech advocate Rob Rhinehart to solve the problems associated with food. In short, it takes too long to prepare, is too expensive, and takes too long to consume. In the video below, Rhinehart explains in more detail what Soylent is all about:

Soylent solves all of that. It provides (in theory) all the necessary nutrition you need in an easy-to-make drink for (potentially) less than the price of eating out or cooking yourself. Since it can be stored, it contributes to less waste; it does not require as much carbon emissions per milligram of protein as, say, factory-produced beef; and can be produced with all-organic ingredients. Environmentally speaking, what’s not to love?

And, c’mon, what kind of a psycho would willingly replace this with Soylent?:

YESSSSSSSSS

Second, I’m not convinced that Soylent is necessarily always the cheaper option for everyone. It may be only $3 per package, but that’s substantially more than it costs to make a pot of rice and beans (baller, if you do it right), or to buy an order of koshari in Cairo.

Finally, while Soylent’s claims to promote a good environmental impact are somewhat admirable, the environmental problems it putatively addresses can and should be addressed by other means. Why do we allow factory farms to overproduce poorly managed cattle and butcher them in appalling conditions? Why do we allow agricultural producers to mass clear land and plant monocrops? Why do we have all of this food waste, and over-processed crap?

Ultimately, Soylent seems like another unnecessarily hi-tech solution based on consuming our way out of problems we created by consumption. It speaks more to something gone horribly wrong in our society: so many people feel so hammered by time and life constraints that even the act of eating has become one more thing to shove aside in the mad dash to… wherever.

I was looking at my pretty unorganized garden – weeds growing wild, absolutely no organization – and feeling pretty grateful that I could still harvest some good from it. Got some beets up in there, corn coming in good, tons of herbs – basil, oregano, cilantro, mint – represent. Even got a pumpkin or two coming through. All the spinach died though, so sad.

Then I started thinking about how we, in the modern world, have absolutely no idea about how to use native plants in agriculture. Think about it. Modern agriculture is characterized largely by monoculture farming, which depends on replacing acres and acres of native crops with one species, which then becomes highly vulnerable to pests, disease, and so on. In order to mitigate against that, we use tons of chemical pesticides and herbicides like atrazine, which leaches toxins into our environment.

But what if we remembered how to use native plants in the way that the First Nations did? What if we didn’t create an agricultural system that depended on erasing natural biodiversity, and imposing artificial and naturally unsustainable systems on top? To get a picture of what this would look like, read Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice by Mark Plotkin.

Here’s a sample, where the author and his indigenous friends, Kamainja and Shafee were walking near the border of Brazil, to encounter a Brazilian peasant vegetable garden:

“Exactly! In our gardens, we always leave some behind because it binds the soil in the rainy season. That peasant’s garden is probably cleaner than his house!”

“And another thing,” said Kamainja. “You look at that plantation and you know the man doesn’t understand the forest. A well-planned garden should look like a hole in the forest opened up when a gian ku-mah-kah tree falls over. Small opening in the forest are filled in by fast-growing weedy plants that attract game animals. When you cut down too much forest, the little plants can’t seed in from the surrounding jungle…”

Admittedly, the stereotype about Canadians is that they’re polite and non-confrontational, so the skeptic might say, “well why wouldn’t they be more likely to adopt a UNESCO Biosphere designation?” And true, unlike New York and Vermont, Canada did not have to deal with cross-cutting jurisdictions in setting it up. However, like anywhere else, establishing rules about access and use in the Reserve did create some tensions with surrounding communities and the city of Mont St. Hilaire. In order to keep the Biosphere designation, the managers at McGill and the City had to agree to ban logging and extractive activities in the core, and limit foot traffic.

However, as this report shows, regulatory limits plus consistent outreach has led to, at the very least, a modus vivendi between the Reserve and the surrounding communities. One hopes that the efforts of local groups like the Lake Champlain Committee can do as good of a job at convincing actors here of the environmental and cultural importance of our own potential Biosphere Reserve.

The article itself – very accessible, especially for an academic piece – gives a great description of an underlying problem in an otherwise sweet little book. (And I specifically set up storytime with this book to encourage the kids to take care of the earth). The short version (read the whole thing!) is that Seuss’ fable presents the solution to environmental crises as occurring through the aggregate of individual action. In other words, if committed people can motivate themselves to plant trees, take care of them, and make the right purchases, the world will get better. Noticeably absent from Seuss’ tale, however, are things like polluter pays laws, and regulations that would have stopped the Once-ler from destroying the Truffula forest in the first place – or at least held him legally and financially responsible after he did.

Not picking on Seuss, though. It’s a nice book. But we should be aware that individual action, especially in a market economy, will only have very limited effect on systematic environmental and political problems. In the meantime, enjoy the video:

Normally, listing something as a biosphere reserve requires fairly modest changes – in order to keep an area listed, governments have to take certain steps, like regulating pollution, human access, and providing ongoing research on biological processes in the area. This would have kept the Lake Champlain region – which is an international basin – linked to international, federal, and local politics.

However, a lack of attention to the concerns of local stakeholders scuttled the project in the early 2000s. Based on interviews I had with people intimately connected to the initial attempts to get the Biosphere registered, suspicion – particularly among the New Yorkers in the Champlain Basin – about signing over sovereign territory to the UN reigned supreme. With language invoking UN Black Helicopters, the states of Vermont and New York failed to get traction towards finalizing the effort. Too bad. It might have been one way to get faster early attention to ongoing water pollution issues in the Lake.

Guest Poster: Katie Theiss, Middlebury Class of 2014

Poaching and the illegal ivory trade hit record numbers in 2011, with around 25,000 African elephants killed, and levels of trade may be even higher this year, according to GreenWire. Driven by poverty and corruption in the supplying countries, the illegal ivory trade network has been met with increasing demand in Asia.

Poaching is an issue of environmental justice. Often times, communities that have been forcefully removed from their homes by conservation groups in order to make way for protected areas resort to poaching as, first, a reaction against the injustice of being removed from their land, and, second, a reaction against seeing a valuable food resource go to waste. Impoverished communities that lie on the outskirts of protected areas, known as “conservation refugees,” often poach in order to survive.

This, however, is not to excuse the damage done to wildlife by poachers. Animal rights groups estimate that poachers in Africa kill between 25,000 and 35,000 elephants annually, meaning 104 elephants die a day. And, of the 157 poaching-related cases detected in Kenya in the past three years, less than five percent have been prosecuted and only three of those convicted were sentenced to jail. The illegal poaching trade is an international network that brings in 17 billion dollars a year. Because of this, experts warn that Africa could lose 20 percent of its elephant population within a decade.

In the first-ever meeting focusing on the dynamics of the entire ivory value chain, which took place in Botswana on Tuesday, December 3rd, 2013, 30 countries agreed, and 6 countries signed a pact, to take “urgent measures to halt the illegal trade and secure elephant populations across Africa.” All of the major countries involved with the ivory trade agreed to the provisions, including the elephant range states, which are Gabon, Kenya, Niger, and Zambia; the ivory transit states, which are Vietnam, Phillipines, and Malaysia; and the ivory destination states, which are China and Thailand.

An especially key signature on the treaty is China, which buys 70% of the world’s ivory. In fact, a spokesman for the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which organized the summit with the Government of Botswana, revealed that it was China who made the suggestion that the illegal trade should be eliminated and that supply and demand should be reduced.

Interactive Link on Ivory Trade

14 measures will be put in place in order, including the classification of the trafficking of ivory as a “serious crime.” This treaty paves the way for international cooperation on this issue, including mutual legal assistance, asset seizure and forfeiture, and extradition.

This treaty is an encouraging example of governance on an issue that requires a multidimensional and international response. While criminalizing the ivory trade may decrease elephant poaching, it does not necessarily solve one of the root causes behind poaching, which is the extreme poverty and environmental injustices caused to communities on the outskirts of protected areas. It is, however, a start.

If you have been awake for any part of the past few years (or longer), you may have noticed there is dysfunction in Washington. This dysfunction reached new bounds this past week as the senate changed its rules in what was deemed the “nuclear option” to prevent filibustering of lower-level presidential appointments. Now, we are clearly in an age where no amount of government dysfunction should surprise us (SEE: government shutdown), and the blame falls to both political parties for their repeated use of brinksmanship and stonewalling negotiations. The symbolic impacts of this change to the senate rules are an important story that has been covered by any number of biased news publications you may wish to read, but left out of much of the analysis is the policy impact. For environmentalists, the decision to circumvent senate filibusters represents a short-term victory.

Obstructionism and failure to compromise led to the “nuclear option” changing the senate rules

The DC court of appeals plays an important role in the environmental policymaking process. There is a special provision in the Clean Air Act stipulating that challenges to rulemaking skip lower courts and go directly to the DC court for appeals. This makes it extremely important for people interested in new regulations against greenhouse gas emissions or crackdowns on coal-fired power plants. Any rule will inevitably be challenged as too strict by industry representatives, so filling the empty seats with liberal judges would give Obama a major advantage. This court has recently ruled against Obama on issues like their delaying a decision on issuing a permit for Yucca Mountain to become a nuclear waste repository.

As of now, the political makeup of the court is balanced. Democratic presidents appointed four judges and republicans appointed the other four, but this does not tell the entire story. When the caseload is full for the regular judges, the overflow goes to the senior (part-time) judges. Of the six senior judges, five are republicans. There are three empty seats on the main court waiting to be filled. Obviously, this presents an important opportunity for the Democrats to gain control of an influential court.

1937 political cartoon when FDR was accused of court packing

Now, some people have said that by nominating justices to fill these seats, Obama is guilt of court packing. I am looking at you Ted Cruz. Though to be fair to the senator from Texas, I should mention that most of the republican establishment is saying the same thing.). They argue that the size of the court should be shrunk down to the current eight members. I am not often one to let facts come in the way of good political theatre, but this is not what court packing is. Just because they want the court to remain ideologically in their favor does not make his nominations invalid. When a Supreme Court justice retires, filling that vacancy is not court packing. It is simply fulfilling a constitutional requirement. If Obama were to expand the size of the Supreme Court to fifteen judges, that would be court packing. This is simply just filling open seats. As a quick aside, if court packing is increasing the number of judges so that the court becomes ideologically balanced in your favor, does that mean that withholding qualified nominations indefinitely to prevent the court from swinging ideologically towards the other side is court unpacking?

Political squabbles aside, the impact of this change to the senate rules is significant. This could eventually be seen as an important moment with regards to Obama’s climate legacy, as any rules he passes will inevitably pass through this court. Looking at the long term we should not expect this change to have any profound advantage to one party or another because each can benefit form the new format when they are in power. But for the moment, we can chalk this one up as a victory for environmentalists.

Energy Industry and Climate Change

World Energy Council Prof. Karl Rose spoke about the recent report from the WEC on Global Scenarios 2050. Like the recent Emissions Gap report from UNEP (under Executive Director Achim Steiner), the report shows that, due to rising energy demand (likely to double by 2050), our current model is still likely to take us well above the increase in global temperatures by 2 degrees Celsius. As Rose says, “We see what we would call a very inconvenient truth, to paraphrase somebody else. We are not getting there.” (For some reason, the WEC has described its projected scenarios of GHG emissions as either Jazz or Symphony, which is horribly twee. I mean, come on).

Click Here for Interactive Map on Copenhagen Climate Commitments

Anyway, Rose is skeptical about a neoliberal approach to addressing carbon production in the fossil fuel industry. “The market has no incentive to actually optimize on anything other than an optimum cost picture.” In other words, market driven actors are all about the cash, yo. Don’t even act like corporate actors care about anything but that dolla.

The EU: The Environmental Conscience of the North?

Valentinas Mauronis of the EU reiterated that the EU is completely committed to creating a binding agreement by 2015. Moreover, the EU is trying to get something underway now, by creating the framework to come up with a globally binding treaty in the next two years: “We need to leave Warsaw with new decisions in relation to mobilizing long-term climate finance and addressing adaptation, and loss, and damage.” In discussing the so far hypothetical (because it hasn’t yet come into force) post-2012 era, Mauronis said: “Let me make clear that the EU is working hard to prepare our ratification of the second commitment of the Kyoto Protocol.”

Connie Hedegaard of the European Commission went on, clarifying the EU’s determination to address the issue of climate change head on, even re-thinking the role of development and environmental problems: Noting that the traditional way of separating environmental costs from economic ones, she pointed out that “one of the things we need is to change our whole economic paradigm. The way we structure our budget, the way we think about economic growth, and progress.” To this end, Hedegaard spoke about unilateral EU commitment to reducing GHG emissions:

“20% of the whole EU-level budget for the next 7 years will go to support our climate change policies. It is 3 times what you have in the present budget.”

Moreover, Hedegaard is concerned that the commitment of US and China to think about phasing out one category of major GHGs, namely HFCs, is insufficient. She pointed out that at recent discussions at the Montreal Protocol, those same states were interested only in minor reductions of their production and consumption.

Finally, Hedegaard called for immediate action to meaningfully reach the 2015 deadline for creating a globally binding agreement:

“2015 is not a tentative deadline. It is a deadline that the whole world must take very seriously… Some will say, ‘Yes, maybe we are not ready, with the work we have to do.’ Let me make clear: Paris 2015 is six years after Copenhagen… There is no excuse.”